The Busy Life of Raina

It’s recently been brought to my attention that people actually read my blog, so I thought an update is in order.

I’m in my last semester as an undergraduate now (eek!) and working hard to find something amazing to do next year. I’m looking at science writing jobs and have applied to a few graduate schools. It’s exhilarating and stressful at the same time–I could be anywhere next year, doing anything!

I’m going to the AAAS meeting this February as a student journalist, and I’m very thankful to be funded to do so by the National Association of Science Writers. I’ll be meeting other young science writers and I’ll be paired with a senior science writer for a day, so I’m looking forward to the entire meeting experience.

This semester I’m getting back into art with my graphic novels class. I spent much of my winter break drawing. Like Tom Baker here.

I already have a book idea–I want to write a graphic novel with history of science content. I think it’s a medium people of all education levels can read and enjoy.

Unfortunately the book is on hold, because I’m also taking Media Production 2 this semester. One of my projects for the class is to produce a science show. I think it’s about time for another fun show like Bill Nye. Here at Hope I have fellow students and equipment to work with, so I can produce it cheaply. I’m pretty excited about the show and will post more about it once it gets going.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go glaze a rum cake.

Society of Physics Students Internship number two

Raina Khatri and Laurie Halse Anderson at the DC ALA conference

This summer I had the opportunity to intern at the American Center for Physics once more, this time diving into the Center for History of Physics. It was, shall we say, different.

I blogged my experience once a week here: http://www.spsnational.org/programs/internships/2010/khatri.htm. It was a summer of reading, writing, and pointing lasers at pigeons. The final product of my summer toil, a historical web exhibit on space science, will be online in a month.

Lewis and Tolkien

This May, I’m taking a class on Lewis and Tolkien to fulfill my senior seminar requirement. It will involve reading a lot of books I haven’t gotten to for whatever reason. Here’s my review for the first of the term:

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis

My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Overall, a good children’s book. Wish I’d read it when I was little. This probably isn’t a popular opinion, but I believe the Christian aspects of the book are the only drawbacks. But not because it’s Christian–in fact, it could have been quite well done as a Christian book–it’s the effect Aslan has on the characters. The instant the driving force of the story shifted from Lucy to Aslan, the book tanked, simply because the kids ceased to be active protagonists. The goal of saving Mr. Tumnus disappeared, and the book felt a bit adrift. I sort of wish Aslan had been more like Jesus in Ben Hur–distant and extremely effective for it.Until that point when Aslan took over, the book was very good. Classic elements of fairy tales shine through, and it’s an enjoyable read.

View all my reviews >>

Write or Die, perfect for NaNoWriMo

I’m strongly considering buying Write or Die‘s Desktop Edition. I used the web version all morning, but I find myself wishing I could save my work right there instead of copying and pasting little chunks from the web browser to my main document. It looks like the ten bucks would be well worth it: full customization of your own prodding, stats, interactive with other users.

We’ll see how desperate I get.

My NaNoWriMo Game Plan

The nerves are getting to me.

I’ve won NaNoWriMo five times. I know I’m capable of writing 50,000 words in a month. But, as always happens in late October, my eye twitches when I look at the calendar and realize November is close. Too close.

NaNoWriMo Software and Help Page

I took a moment to assemble some of my more useful links to writing resources and added them to my blog. You can check out the page here: NaNoWriMo Software and Help.

I’ll add more pages as I find them, particularly tutorials and writing strategies.

Happy writing!

Word Processing Software for NaNoWriMo

It’s a personal quirk of mine to never write my novels in Microsoft Word. There’s no reason for my snobbery. I just think it’s more fun to write in other programs instead. Word is for making your manuscript presentable, not writing it.

For the past few years I’ve used Q10, but this year I’ve been hesitant to do so. I was introduced to the wonders of Liquid Story Binder and yWriter last March for NaNoEdMo. As a result I’ve been bopping between the three, looking at pros and cons.

Two Reasons Why, off the top of my head, the Large Hadron Collider is Not Being Sabotaged from the Future

I just read this article from io9: Is the Large Hadron Collider Being Sabotaged from the Future?

Plausible. Quite plausible, and fun to ponder. But, unless time travel in the future works like the method in the Terminator ‘verse, in which you can only go back or forward  in units of whole years and therefore can’t exactly control where you show up in the past, the much easier way to stop us from observing the Higgs boson would be to make sure the LHC were never built. I would think cutting funding or stamping out support is far easier than disabling the machine once it’s built. Plus, we wouldn’t seek to repair the LHC and continue experiments if it didn’t exist.

NaNoWriMo brings out the Han Solo in me.

That is, once a year, I “have a bad feeling about this.”                        

As usual, there are four or five stories in my head that need writing. As usual, it’s perfectly clear which two of those will yield a final product worth my time. As usual, it’s also clear which one of the two would be most beneficial to myself and humanity. And as usual, I want to write the unworthy, unbeneficial option I’ve called “Project Opposite of Twilight with Robots Instead of Vampires.”

The Good Sauce that Went Bad

I have nothing to say about writing today, but I wrote up my lunchtime experience over at Raina Masala.

Marinara in a hurry: Experiment 1.